1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reading device, an image forming apparatus, electronic paper, and a computer program product.
2. Description of the Related Art
Because of its productivity and space-saving ability, a reading device is popular that is applicable to a sheet-through system in which a scanner part is fixed and an image is obtained by carrying a document at a predetermined speed. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-151925 discloses this type of reading device that sets a transport speed corresponding to the type of paper medium (such as thin paper and thick paper) in a plurality of sheets loaded on a table or read magnification, to read a plurality of documents efficiently.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-219164 discloses an electronic medium called electronic paper (hereinafter, “e-paper”) having functions of a paper medium and an electronic display. The e-paper includes, for example, an electrophoretic display. This display forms an image by filling white particles (e.g., titanium oxide) and black particles (e.g., carbon black) charged positive and negative, respectively, in a microcapsule filled with a transparent liquid, coating this on a transparent base material, and applying an external voltage thereto to attract respective particles onto a display surface. This type of e-paper can be connected to a personal computer via a universal serial bus (USB), so that the personal computer can update the electronic data to be displayed on the display or read the electronic data stored in a memory of the display. Further, it has been studied heretofore to constitute the display by a polymer film.
In the conventional reading device, however, it has not been taken into consideration to read both the paper medium and the e-paper.